Greensboro, North Carolina (CNN) - Prosecutors wrapped up their case in the John Edwards corruption trial Thursday, detailing hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses used by his former mistress, whose concealment during Edwards' failed presidential run remains at the heart of the scandal.

They say the expenses ranged from luxury hotels to private jets to high-priced rental homes largely paid for by Fred Baron, a now-deceased Texas lawyer who was Edwards' finance chairman.

(CNN) - Two senior administration officials said Thursday that Vice President Joe Biden met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office Wednesday morning and apologized for putting Obama in a tough position.

The president responded to the apology by saying that he knew Biden was speaking from the heart, the officials said.

A spokeswoman for the vice president, Kendra Barkoff, also issued a statement Thursday: "The President has been the leader on this issue from day one. And the Vice President never intended to distract from that."

(CNN) – Sarah Palin threw her voice into the Texas Republican Senate race on Thursday, endorsing tea party favorite Ted Cruz less than three weeks before the state's primary.

"We're proud to join conservatives in Texas and throughout the nation in supporting your campaign to become the next Senator from the Lone Star State," Palin wrote in a letter to Cruz, which was released by his campaign.FULL POST

(CNN) – The day after President Barack Obama publicly endorsed same-sex marriage, and later issued a call for donations, his Republican rival said the hot button topic shouldn't be used to raise campaign cash.

"I don't think the matter of marriage is really a fundraising matter, either for the president, and it is certainly not for me," Romney said Thursday on Fox News.FULL POST

Washington (CNN) – Imagine if these two women didn't live to see their 5th birthday.

A young Hillary Clinton growing up in the Chicago suburbs wouldn't have grown up to be first lady, a senator and now secretary of state. Kim Kardashian would have never become a world-famous reality star and mesmerized millions of fans around the world with her overpriced wedding.FULL POST

CNN's GUT CHECK | for May 10, 2012 | 5 p.m.
– n. a pause to assess the state, progress or condition of the political news cycle

JUST IN: According to Twitter, President Obama’s announcement that he supports same sex marriage generated more than 1.6 million tweets, peaking Wednesday at 3:22 p.m. ET. with more than 7,000 tweets per minute. Check out this eye-popping chart over how quickly news spreads and peaks.

(CNN) – Mitt Romney apologized for any "teasing or taunts" he carried out in high school that others deemed offensive and possibly homophobic, following a Thursday news article that included first hand accounts from his time at an all-boys prep school.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee said he did not specifically remember two incidents described in the Washington Post story, but said other student's sexual orientation was "the furthest thing from our minds in the 1960s."FULL POST

Washington (CNN) - Vice President Joe Biden gave no indication the White House was planning to change its position on same sex marriage when he was asked about it just weeks ago at an LGBT fundraiser in Los Angeles, two attendees told CNN.

Because it was an off the record event these participants did not want to be named, but told CNN when Biden was asked about gay marriage he talked about his comfort with gay and lesbian couples raising families, adding that the president sets the policy and offered no indication that there would be a shift in policy.

(CNN) - Michele Bachmann no longer wants to be Swiss, the Minnesota congresswoman announced Thursday, and has requested the Swiss government drop her dual citizenship.

Bachmann's spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday that she had recently been granted dual citizenship, for which she had been eligible since her 1978 marriage, but "recently some of their children wanted to exercise their eligibility for dual-citizenship so they went through the process as a family."FULL POST